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American
Society on Aging
Aging Today
November 2016
“Design WITH me, not FOR
me!” That’s the mantra used by Dr. June Fisher, 82 year old
physician and designer with the CITRIS program at the University of California,
Berkeley. As a person with a career in occupational medicine and insights drawn
from her current elderhood, Dr. Fisher plays a key role in educating design
students, colleagues, and entrepreneurs who claim to be adapting and developing
successful new technologies for an aging population. She recently judged a
“pitch” event where young designers could present their ideas for new
products and services. “She noted that most of the start-up pitches were
delivered in a way that ignores and disregards most seniors’ acute
awareness of their needs, and leads to products that inappropriately address
seniors’ needs”. (cited in
Aging2.0)
We often hear stories about the
mis-match between developing technologies and the lifeworld of elders. There is
an ongoing lag in the adoption of new technologies by older adults, when
compared with younger ones. We might question whether the field of design has
not suffered from the separation of observer and observed (expert and
“user”) so characteristic of positive science. Traditional design and
art are often organized around the notion that outcomes and products are
fore-ordained by a pre- existing image held by an expert, albeit based on some
presumption about the problem or need of the client or the tastes of the
spectators.
Co-design, as a growing international
movement, blurs the divide between expert and user, where the latter takes on
the role of co-creator or co-producer. In this way of thinking, so beautifully
described by anthropologist Tim Ingold, the idea does not precede the act of
making (the Cartesian model) so much as making itself produces the idea. Citing
Paul Klee’s famous aphorism, “drawing is like taking a line for a
walk”, Ingold holds that the process of design “does not transform
the world. It is rather part of the world’s transforming itself... if
there is a distinction between design and making, it is not between the
projects and their implementation but between the pull of hopes and dreams and
the drag of material constraint.” (2013:146)
Drawing a parallel, Italian designer
Ezio Manzini suggests that every product is “beta” in character
insofar as it is interpreted and adapted by the user; that the designer should
stand close enough to understand the everyday and local experience that
distinguishes problem-solving from sense-making (2013). The “beta”
nature of all products was well illustrated in a recent New York Times article
about homegrown methods that seniors use to modify products to suit their
needs. While older commentators objected to the author’s use of the term
hacking to describe this practice, most agreed that older people routinely take
things (products) into their own hands. The ubiquity of this practice suggests
that we are totally missing the boat by not including older adults at all
stages of the design process. (Hacks
Can Ease the Trials of Aging)
Co-design will play a growing role in
the field of aging and technology. Can new environments, services, and
technologies be developed by supporting elders to be authentic partners
(co-creators) in the design process? Doing this means going beyond the simple
focus group (input) model of participation to create methods by which elders 1)
help ask the first questions, 2) lend their insights to design and making, and
3), provide the local context for design, development and evaluation. Some
innovative programs are leading the way.
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Avenidas, a San Francisco Bay area
program for, and with, seniors, is developing the
Generations Lab,
a space for introducing and supporting older adults in learning new
technologies and employing that knowledge to assist entrepreneurs in shaping
age-friendly products and technologies.
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The
Senior
Planet Exploration Center is the latest innovation in computer training
from the longstanding OATS (Older Adults Technology Program) founded in
Brooklyn in 2004. The Center is located on a street front in Manhattan’s
Chelsea Neighborhood and is outfitted with the latest consumer technology
options in a comfortable and welcoming environment. Patrons use state of the
art technology for mobile devices, internet access and engage in collaborative
training in digital photography and gaming with educational screenings, a video
chat room, and a collaborative work station and open access computer
stations.
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One of the most venerable co-design
projects is the Age and Ability
Research Lab at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal School of
Art in London. For over ten years, students and faculty at the centre have
worked intimately with older adults and people with disabilities to observe,
converse and better understand their activities of daily living with a view to
developing prototypes and working with industry research partners to test and
bring new products to the marketplace. The Inclusive Design Toolkit is a wealth
of rich information about the methods of co-design, applicable to many
scenarios, whether they involve technology, products, environments, or
services.
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Richard Caro, is CEO of
Tech-enhanced Life, a public
benefit corporation that researches and evaluates technology for seniors. In
the spirit of co-design, Richard has organized The Longevity Explorers. The
Explorers meet monthly to talk about unmet needs associated with growing older;
critique specific products; brainstorm solutions to some of the challenges of
aging; and compare notes about gadgets they like to use. As the work of the
seniors comes to be known by designers and developers in the marketplace, we
can anticipate better design and, ultimately, a better quality of life in later
years.
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CITRIS is the Center for
Information Technology in the Interest of Society, based at the University of
California, Berkeley. In the spring of 2016, CITRIS piloted its first co-design
course built upon co-creator partnerships with older adults – Navigating
the Human Path. Undergraduate design students and older adults spent the
semester together learning how designing with, rather than for, can solve
address important needs of older adults and, perhaps more importantly, how
older adults can inform the design process. As a co-instructor in the course,
June Fisher, cited above, keeps students on target with plea ...
“Don’t come up with an idea and then try to impose it upon
me...”
Navigating the Human Path Highlight
(video 1:28)
82 year old
physician and entrepreneur June Fisher from San Francisco shares her
experiences with badly designed products (audio 21:14)
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